John Sandford - Silken Prey

“I’ll call you back if anything happens,” Del said. “It looks like they’re gonna be here for a while. A couple of TV trucks just came in. I’m gonna stick that bug on their truck.”

“Make sure you can do it clean.”

“Do that,” Del said.

• • •

LUCAS WAS ON THE STREET, ten miles away, in a parallel parking spot, ready to roll out in front of Carver, if he came that way. He couldn’t actually see Carver, but Jenkins could, from a dry-cleaning shop across from the Starbucks. From his vantage point, Jenkins said it looked like Carver had gotten two or three cups of coffee at twenty-minute intervals and spent the rest of the time crouched over an iPad.

“I don’t think he’s reading the Bible,” Jenkins said, on his handset. “But whatever it is, he’s all over it.”

“Maybe he’s buying plane tickets,” suggested Shrake, who was on the same net. Shrake was a half-mile up the street, ready to follow if Carver broke that way.

“That worries me,” Lucas said. “We don’t have enough to pull him in. If he gets on a plane, all we could do is wave good-bye.”

“I haven’t seen him take out a credit card,” Jenkins said. “I’m more worried that he’s waiting for his dry cleaning.”

“This guy isn’t dry cleaning, he’s strictly wash-and-wear,” Shrake said. “He’s all Under Armour and nylon shells and combat boots.”

“Sounds like you,” Jenkins said. Then: “Hey. He’s up. Looks . . . He’s headed out.” A minute later, “He’s turning your way, Lucas. You better move.”

“Got him on the monitor,” Shrake said.

Lucas rolled away and said, “I’m gonna jump on 94, bet he’s headed back to Grant’s.”

• • •

CARVER HAD SPENT an hour with his iPad, part of the time doing what Lucas had feared: checking planes from Minneapolis to the East Coast—New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Miami. He’d also checked in with old acquaintances working with contractors who supplied private security personnel in Afghanistan and several other nations in the Middle East and Africa; he asked about job openings.

Time, he thought, to get out of Minneapolis.

He spent the last minute or two on his cell phone. He was in-house for the party that evening, which Schiffer had said would go until ten-thirty or so, and then they’d head downtown to the Radisson Hotel for the victory party, if there was a victory party. The house party was reserved for political big shots and large donors.

He punched Dannon’s number, and Dannon came up: “Yes.”

“Is she winning?”

“Yes. Looks like it’s in the bag. You at the house?”

“No, but I’m heading that way now,” Carver said. “I need to talk to you. Privately. Right now. I got hit hard by Davenport.”

Dannon said, “We’re doing the last show. We’ll be back there by five-thirty.”

“I’ll be waiting,” Carver said.

• • •

KIDD AND LAUREN HAD a bad moment when they turned Jackson over to the babysitter. The babysitter was a middle-aged nurse who was grateful for the extra under-the-table cash money from Kidd; five hundred a month, with babysitting services on a moment’s notice. She worked the day shift, and was available anytime after three o’clock in the afternoon, seven days a week. She adored Jackson, and Jackson liked her back.

But leaving Jackson, a thin child, tall for his age, strong, with a happy smile morning to night . . . Kidd got desperately tight in the throat, and Lauren said, “I know: but we’re doing it. I need this, Kidd.”

So they left him.

• • •

AT 45 DEGREES NORTH, the night comes early in November. They rolled out a few minutes after seven-thirty into the kind of autumn darkness that comes only with a thick cloud layer, no hint of starlight or moonlight, and no prospect of any. Lauren drove.

She was already dressed in her black brushed-cotton suit. Her hood, and her equipment, were locked in a concealed box behind the second row of seats. They chitchatted on the way across town, through enough traffic to keep things slow; Jackson wasn’t mentioned.

They were a mile from Grant’s place at eight-fifteen. The day before, they’d spotted a diner with a strong and reliable Wi-Fi and no protection, with parking on the side and in back, out of sight from the street. Kidd signed on from a laptop and dialed up another laptop, which was hooked into his cell phone, back at the condo. His phone made a call to a friend who, at that moment, was playing a violin in a chamber quartet at the birthday party for a St. Paul surgeon’s wife. Kidd let the call ring through to the answering service, left a message that suggested handball on Friday.

“Done,” he said, when he’d hung up. An alibi. Both of their desktop computers would be roaming websites all through the evening, and they’d send out a couple of e-mails.

“Let’s see what’s going on.”

Kidd signed on to Taryn’s security system. All the cameras were operating, the interior cameras showing perhaps two or three dozen people in suits and dresses with cocktails, all apparently talking at full speed. The bedroom was dark, which was perfect. If it hadn’t been, Lauren would have had to come in through a dead-ended hallway, at a seating area, that would have been more exposed to a visitor, but was free of cameras. This way, she could go in through the en suite bathroom. Outside, the cameras showed several uniformed men behind the fence along the line of the street, and a few people standing in the street, looking at the house.

“The uninvited,” Lauren said. “Check the backyard.”

Kidd cycled to the backyard cameras. They saw one guard, moving along the perimeter of the huge lot. A side camera showed the dog kennel, with both dogs sitting inside, alert, apparently watching the guard.

“There’s the competition,” Kidd said.

“Not if they’re penned up,” Lauren said. “They can’t see my entry point. As long as they’re not set loose . . .”

“They’ve got noses like radar,” Kidd said.

“Yes. Keep an eye on them. If they turn them loose, I’ll call it off.”

They watched for fifteen minutes, until Lauren said, “Okay, we’ve got it.”

Just before Kidd killed the image from the cameras, they saw a security man in a coat walk through the picture. “Mean-looking guy,” Kidd said. “I think that’s Carver.”

“I’ll stay away from him,” Lauren said.

“Yeah. Far away.” He reached out, put his hand on top of her head and turned her face toward his, and kissed her and said, “Let’s call it off.”

“No. I’m going in,” Lauren said. “Tomorrow, I’m back to little housewifey.”

“Fuck me,” Kidd said, as he started the car. “Fuck me.”

• • •

DANNON AND CARVER got together before dark, and Carver laid it out, exactly as it had happened: Davenport was blackmailing him for information.

“He’s gonna get me, man,” Carver said. He didn’t seem scared, Dannon thought: he looked wired, like he might before a bad-odds mission. “He says that the governor will go on TV and talk about what happened in the ’stan. He says they can force the army to take me back and put me on trial. He said it was a massacre like that one in Vietnam, and there’s no way that Obama could let it go.”

“That’s bullshit, man,” Dannon said. “That whole thing is buried so deep, and the guys who buried it all have stars now. They’d never get you.”

“That’s what I told him,” Carver said. “I think he’s going to do it anyway. I’m telling you, he’s a crazy mean cocksucker. He’s got nothing unless I talk, except the ’stan, and he’ll use it to bust my balls.”

“If you talk, he’ll bust more than your balls. He’ll put you in the penitentiary forever,” Dannon said.